> Armstrong claimed he’d seen engineers „use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks“ and that non-technical teams in the company are „shipping production code,“
Non-technical teams are shipping production code?
Uh-oh.
And this is a fintech company, so double uh-oh.
TRO_KIK on
If AI can be used to cut headcount for the same output, it can also be used to improve output with the same headcount. Even if their claims about AI driving all this are 100% true, it doesn’t say good things about how they’re doing. They’ll get their lunch eaten by competitors that are less pathetically desperate to save money.
JohnGalactusX on
They should replace all the top brass with AI. Life would be far better that way.
KelleQuechoz on
_AI-naive restructuring_
Grid-00 on
We need that Chinese law that will make companies pay in taxes the wages of workers they lay off. Then use these wages tax for the retraining of the workforce affected by AI layoffs.
SNTCTN on
How long before crypto in accounts start disappearing?
a_velis on
More AI washing.
no_dice on
Stock is down nearly 50% since last October and their earnings report coming this week is expected to be brutal. I have yet to see any org make an announcement like this that’s in a healthy financial state.
jadeskye7 on
ahahaha this will end well.
PilotJeff on
When is the svp and above agent releasing? If any of this backfires these people should be black listed in the industry. The stakes need to be much higher , this isn’t being bold and innovative which are things we typically reward. I’ve seen this semi blind enthusiasm in my own company.
And the number of shaking yes heads trying not to get fired just contribute to all of this confirmation bias. Stop now and get some balls
Darkseid_Omega on
“Non-technical” shipping code to production isn’t the flex they think it is. Especially for fintech.
However that could mean anything — it could literally be a product manager updating documentation or a designer tweaking UI.
jb4647 on
This is exactly the kind of thing David Graeber was getting at in his book [Bullshit Jobs](https://amzn.to/4unO78C). A lot of big companies spent the last couple decades building layers of managers, coordinators, box tickers, status-report generators, internal process people, and people whose main job was managing the appearance of work rather than producing anything concrete. Now AI comes along and suddenly executives are admitting, maybe without meaning to, that a chunk of that structure was always fragile.
This article is pretty clear about it. Armstrong is talking about engineers shipping in days what used to take teams weeks, non-technical teams shipping code, automating workflows, cutting management layers, and even experimenting with “one person teams.” That is not just “AI is replacing workers.” It is also “we built organizations full of handoffs, meetings, approval layers, and coordination overhead, and now we are using AI as the excuse to rip some of that out.”
That does not mean every person laid off had a fake job or deserved it. That is the lazy read. A lot of real people are getting hurt here, and a lot of companies will absolutely use “AI-native” as corporate perfume for plain old cost cutting. But Graeber’s point was never that workers are useless. It was that modern organizations create useless structures, then trap normal people inside them and make everyone pretend the structure is rational.
So yeah, some of this is AI. Some of it is crypto being down. Some of it is Wall Street wanting leaner headcount. But some of it is also the bill coming due for years of corporate bloat dressed up as innovation. “AI-native restructuring” sounds futuristic, but a lot of it is just management finally saying out loud that maybe half the org chart was there to feed the org chart.
Haunterblademoi on
AI does it again
copperblood on
Crypto just needs another 17 years before mass adoption!! 🤣
larder_unit on
Besides the coding risk, who do these companies think will buy their products when their consumer base becomes unemployed?
ISmellLikeBlackTea on
In any normal society such a move would get the CEO fired and the company socially ostracized. Even China moved ahead with making such behavior illegal with severe penalties to the company.
jahathebrn on
Look forward to seeing how this pans out
RandomRedditor44 on
> Armstrong claimed he’d seen engineers „use Al to ship in days what used to take a team weeks“
I seriously doubt AI is getting engineers to ship features in days instead of weeks.
Similar-Low-3114 on
echoes of „we test on production“ lmao. This is going to be catostrophic and then the C level execs will blame the tech for not being up to snuff while they vibed away the actual engineers.
BoysenberryDue3637 on
Within 6 months there is going to be billions of $ of crypto stollen/missing. But they will not be able to figure out who/what was stolen because the code used to manage it was developed by AI/Non-technical teams. Coinbase goes out of business because of all the lawsuits.
mobani on
Am I the only one shocked that coinbase even have 700 workers?
TurtleMode on
“that non-technical teams in the company are shipping production code” wow that’s scary.. would u trust ur money in a company where a PM with zero coding experience is putting code into production? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me!
eebro on
Good cue to take your money out from there.
r_search12013 on
1-3 months from now: coinbase had massive database leak
No-Newspaper-7693 on
They increased headcount by 30% last year. They over hired are blaming AI for it. This is also their 3rd large scale layoff event in 4 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COIN/coinbase-global/number-of-employees
They just seem like a very mismanaged company.
ReactionJifs on
the ol‘ Allbirds Gambit 🕊
xParesh on
This is just like old school „out-sourcing“ where companies think they found a great new way to lay off staff and save money.
Until it all goes wrong and they end up having to pay severance and re-hiring all their old workers back for even more money because the power balance has swung and they’re in the shit and need former employees to bail them out again to keep the shareholders happy.
Its an employment story as old as time.
miniannna on
workers at yesterdays overhyped tech scam screwed over by today’s overhyped tech scam
Mutherfalker95 on
It’s weird that China even made laws against AI taking human jobs but we consider corporations human.
peakedtooearly on
Sounds like they’re in trouble.
clckwrxz on
I’m pro AI, but if you want to see what future failure looks like read no further than “non engineers shipping production code”. On financial software. Get fucked…
DoorBreaker101 on
A couple of days ago I asked Claude to scaffold a test for me. I even mentioned the file name I wanted it in.
It started rewriting the related backend code, so I had to intervene and stop it. I’m not saying this is a common case, but it goes off script sometimes and it’s not always this blatantly easy to spot.
So good luck to those non technical teams!
GadreelsSword on
Nothing like having your money controlled by an error plagued technology!
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33 Kommentare
> Armstrong claimed he’d seen engineers „use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks“ and that non-technical teams in the company are „shipping production code,“
Non-technical teams are shipping production code?
Uh-oh.
And this is a fintech company, so double uh-oh.
If AI can be used to cut headcount for the same output, it can also be used to improve output with the same headcount. Even if their claims about AI driving all this are 100% true, it doesn’t say good things about how they’re doing. They’ll get their lunch eaten by competitors that are less pathetically desperate to save money.
They should replace all the top brass with AI. Life would be far better that way.
_AI-naive restructuring_
We need that Chinese law that will make companies pay in taxes the wages of workers they lay off. Then use these wages tax for the retraining of the workforce affected by AI layoffs.
How long before crypto in accounts start disappearing?
More AI washing.
Stock is down nearly 50% since last October and their earnings report coming this week is expected to be brutal. I have yet to see any org make an announcement like this that’s in a healthy financial state.
ahahaha this will end well.
When is the svp and above agent releasing? If any of this backfires these people should be black listed in the industry. The stakes need to be much higher , this isn’t being bold and innovative which are things we typically reward. I’ve seen this semi blind enthusiasm in my own company.
And the number of shaking yes heads trying not to get fired just contribute to all of this confirmation bias. Stop now and get some balls
“Non-technical” shipping code to production isn’t the flex they think it is. Especially for fintech.
However that could mean anything — it could literally be a product manager updating documentation or a designer tweaking UI.
This is exactly the kind of thing David Graeber was getting at in his book [Bullshit Jobs](https://amzn.to/4unO78C). A lot of big companies spent the last couple decades building layers of managers, coordinators, box tickers, status-report generators, internal process people, and people whose main job was managing the appearance of work rather than producing anything concrete. Now AI comes along and suddenly executives are admitting, maybe without meaning to, that a chunk of that structure was always fragile.
This article is pretty clear about it. Armstrong is talking about engineers shipping in days what used to take teams weeks, non-technical teams shipping code, automating workflows, cutting management layers, and even experimenting with “one person teams.” That is not just “AI is replacing workers.” It is also “we built organizations full of handoffs, meetings, approval layers, and coordination overhead, and now we are using AI as the excuse to rip some of that out.”
That does not mean every person laid off had a fake job or deserved it. That is the lazy read. A lot of real people are getting hurt here, and a lot of companies will absolutely use “AI-native” as corporate perfume for plain old cost cutting. But Graeber’s point was never that workers are useless. It was that modern organizations create useless structures, then trap normal people inside them and make everyone pretend the structure is rational.
So yeah, some of this is AI. Some of it is crypto being down. Some of it is Wall Street wanting leaner headcount. But some of it is also the bill coming due for years of corporate bloat dressed up as innovation. “AI-native restructuring” sounds futuristic, but a lot of it is just management finally saying out loud that maybe half the org chart was there to feed the org chart.
AI does it again
Crypto just needs another 17 years before mass adoption!! 🤣
Besides the coding risk, who do these companies think will buy their products when their consumer base becomes unemployed?
In any normal society such a move would get the CEO fired and the company socially ostracized. Even China moved ahead with making such behavior illegal with severe penalties to the company.
Look forward to seeing how this pans out
> Armstrong claimed he’d seen engineers „use Al to ship in days what used to take a team weeks“
I seriously doubt AI is getting engineers to ship features in days instead of weeks.
echoes of „we test on production“ lmao. This is going to be catostrophic and then the C level execs will blame the tech for not being up to snuff while they vibed away the actual engineers.
Within 6 months there is going to be billions of $ of crypto stollen/missing. But they will not be able to figure out who/what was stolen because the code used to manage it was developed by AI/Non-technical teams. Coinbase goes out of business because of all the lawsuits.
Am I the only one shocked that coinbase even have 700 workers?
“that non-technical teams in the company are shipping production code” wow that’s scary.. would u trust ur money in a company where a PM with zero coding experience is putting code into production? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me!
Good cue to take your money out from there.
1-3 months from now: coinbase had massive database leak
They increased headcount by 30% last year. They over hired are blaming AI for it. This is also their 3rd large scale layoff event in 4 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/COIN/coinbase-global/number-of-employees
They just seem like a very mismanaged company.
the ol‘ Allbirds Gambit 🕊
This is just like old school „out-sourcing“ where companies think they found a great new way to lay off staff and save money.
Until it all goes wrong and they end up having to pay severance and re-hiring all their old workers back for even more money because the power balance has swung and they’re in the shit and need former employees to bail them out again to keep the shareholders happy.
Its an employment story as old as time.
workers at yesterdays overhyped tech scam screwed over by today’s overhyped tech scam
It’s weird that China even made laws against AI taking human jobs but we consider corporations human.
Sounds like they’re in trouble.
I’m pro AI, but if you want to see what future failure looks like read no further than “non engineers shipping production code”. On financial software. Get fucked…
A couple of days ago I asked Claude to scaffold a test for me. I even mentioned the file name I wanted it in.
It started rewriting the related backend code, so I had to intervene and stop it. I’m not saying this is a common case, but it goes off script sometimes and it’s not always this blatantly easy to spot.
So good luck to those non technical teams!
Nothing like having your money controlled by an error plagued technology!